IFA 2001 brief show report (part one)

IFA
2001: The IFA 2001 exhibition in Berlin falls as the only major trade
show (in Europe at least) before Christmas this year (Photokina being
biennial - every second year). Several manufacturers have announced new
products and most of those are on show at IFA. In this part of the report
we will cover Canon, Casio, Fujifilm, Grundig, Iomega and Kodak. (Part
one of two)

Internationale Funkausstellung25/August/2001 - 2/September/2001

The acronym IFA stands for Internationale Funkausstellung,
which translates literally as 'International Radio Exhibition'. The show
itself covers a wide range of products from Multimedia, Internet to Wireless
technology, Mobile Telephones, Hi-Fi, A/V, TV's, Digital Cameras etc.
Note that we have concentrated only on digital camera products, there
was A WHOLE LOT MORE at the show.

IFA is clearly a show for 'combined business', that is
the promotion of products to the consumer for the Christmas period and
also as a chance for manufacturers to convince dealers and "buyers"
(for large chain stores) to take on their new products for Christmas.
Some of the stands which had a limited consumer 'frontage' did have fairly
large "closed doors" discussion areas for this purpose.

Because the show is still underway and stretches over
nine days we will update this report at the end of the show with any other
announcements which may occur later. The review is written in the past
tense, however if you're reading this before September 2nd you still have
an opportunity to go to IFA yourself!

You may have noticed that Olympus aren't on this list,
that's because they didn't have a stand at the actual exhibition halls
but they may well have some announcements to make towards the end of the
show.

Digital Camera / accessories manufacturers(alphabetical order)

Canon

Canon had an impressive, spacious stand with a good range
of both demonstrated and hands-on with their full range of digital cameras.
Taking a prominent position (and also available for hands on) was the
recently announced PowerShot G2. Center stage was a large circular podium
with Mika
Hakkinen's 2000 McLaren Mercedes Formula One car, this surrounded
by both digital cameras and DV video cameras. The Canon stand was probably
second only to the Sony stand.

Casio

Casio had a relatively small, simple stand with product
'behind glass', although the products could be brought out for demonstration,
there was no walk up hands-on. The new 4 megapixel QV4000 was there as
well as some of the older QV products.

Fujifilm

Fujifilm had a logically laid out and nicely presented
stand with digital camera products taking prominence. There was demonstration
and hands-on with the full range of cameras as well as the recently announced
Finepix A101, A201 and 2600Z. The Fujifilm stand was in my opinion logically
laid out and useful with plenty of hands-on and demonstrators to explain
details.

Grundig

Not known for their digital cameras German manufacturer
Grundig dug deep and presented their new Picca DMC 5100 MP3 digital camera.
The DMC 5100 is capable of 1.3 megapixel shots (1280 x 960) using a CMOS
(!) sensor, video clips, can act as a webcam and also plays MP3 audio
tracks. Storage comes courtesy of an SD/MMC slot and it's powered by AA
batteries. Noticeably missing is a review LCD, but it does have flash...

Iomega

The Iomega stand was tucked away in a different part
of the show, although they did have the Peerless storage drives at the
stand they were securely tucked away behind glass. There was also no sign
of the new Firewire Docking station ('Drive').

Kodak

Kodak had a large stand but with a limited number of
demonstration points. To their credit they did have the newly announced
DX3900, DX3700 and DX3215 'EasyShare' digital cameras hooked up to laptop
computers to show just how easy it is to download images. Having said
all this it didn't seem to have the buzz of some of the other stands (Fujifilm,
Canon, Sony).